A Long, Strange Trip
by Eileen
Summary: Cassie, a girl from our time, is mysteriously transported to Santa Carla. Think you know the story? Think again. Please note: all spelling errors are intentional.


**Present day **

**Somewhere in Western Ohio**

OMG liek these meeeen pepul have been sayin stuf about ma storees! Tehy petrended to be ma freends and all the tiem they were LAFFING AT ME behind ma back! how rude!

I now where tehy live and I will get them

The girl hit SUBMIT POST and watched as her blog was updated. The nerve of those people, signing up for her mailing list and pretending to be her friends, when all the time they were making fun of her! And on a religious website, too! Though someone had posted that "Godawful Stories" was not religious at all, but a site to mock bad fiction.

If they thought it was so bad, why did they send her e-mails saying "O my god I luv ur storees wriet moar!"

They were EVIL! And everyone on her mailing list must know!

"Cassie! Are you on the computer again?"

"I'm doing my homework!" she said, quickly clicking into another open browser window in case her mother came in to check.

"I don't want you writing those filthy stories any more! If I find any more Elizabethan smut on the hard drive, I'll ground you! Is that clear?"

"Yes, Mom."

Smut? Her stories weren't smut! She was writing . . . what did her English teacher call it? Oh, yeah, "historical erotica." Still gave her a C for her last assignment, though.

She clicked back over into her latest piece, and in the middle of a sentence, an icon at the bottom of the screen flashed.

WTF? she thought, clicking on it. It took her into her main e-mail account.

There were two new messages at the top of the screen. She opened the first one. Probably the haters (which, in true chat speak form, she always spelled h8ers) harassing her again.

TO: evanescencefan16

FROM: acritic

SUBJECT: Enough is enough

Listen, sweetheart, I've tried to help you. I've pointed out the things in your story that need fixing. We all make mistakes. I do, you do, everybody does.

You can either take my advice and thank me later, or ignore it and go on with your life. I don't really care anymore.

But to throw a screaming fit about it and accuse me of being "mean" (please note proper spelling) is not the mature thing to do. I've had it with your tantrums.

Cassie, the world does not revolve around you. If you post your work on a public fiction site, people are going to read it. Some of them will not like it. They have a right to their opinion. Just because someone dislikes your story does not mean they're flaming you. Please see my blog for what a flame actually looks like.

I've had it with your brattiness. I give up. Do what you want, you will anyway.

Anonymous Critic

How dare she! She? He, she, whatever! Why was this Anonymous Critic person harassing her?

She hit REPLY.

TO: acritic

FROM: evanescencefan16

SUBJECT: Y R U SO MEEN?

y can't you levae me alone? stop boverign me! I meen it!

After she sent it, she deleted Anonymous Critic's message and went on to the next one:

TO: evanescencefan16

FROM: wearegstories

SUBJECT: An apology from all of us

Click **here** for the full story.

Now it must be said that Cassie, or EVF as the GASTers called her, was unaware of the basics of Internet safety. For instance, she should never have given out her real e-mail address or any other personal information to virtual strangers.

And she definitely shouldn't have clicked the link in the e-mail.

The whole screen went white, and she thought at first, _Great, they've sent me a virus. _But as the whiteness expanded, she wasn't so sure.

The light bulb in the lamp on the computer desk exploded.

All she could see was whiteness, all around. She wasn't in her computer chair any more. It was almost like . . . she was moving.

But how?

Air was rushing all around her, like she was running very fast . . . or flying.

Flying?

_What's happening?_

She barely had time to breathe before she felt herself falling through the air. She put her arms out to slow her fall, but it did no good.

Then the whiteness all around her cleared, and she was standing in the middle of a crowd of people. It was night. There was music, somewhere.

This couldn't be happening. What kind of computer virus could pick her up out of her chair and send her somewhere else?

And where the heck was she?

Her parents were going to **kill **her! If they had to drive all the way to who knew where to pick her up . . .

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and tried to dial her home number, but the phone was silent.

No signal. Great!

She spotted a group of guys standing across the way and went to ask them for help. Oh my God, they were so gorgeous! One of them looked like that guy on _24_, only younger. Like his brother or something.

One of them must have a better plan than the crappy Pay As You Go that her parents got for her. Maybe she could borrow their phone.

Then she could get out of here, wherever here was, and go home and give those mean people what they deserved.

**1987 **

**Santa Carla**

Dwayne saw the girl coming their way and alerted the others. It wasn't often that dinner walked right up to them, though this little girl would hardly be much of a meal.

"Hi," she said. "Can I borrow your cell?"

They looked at each other in confusion. "My what?" Dwayne asked her.  
"Your phone! Mine's not getting a signal. I thought you might have a better plan. My friend Tiffany has this awesome phone with a slide-out keyboard and a Web browser and lots of cool stuff, and she's always messaging me stuff even though my crappy phone can't save it. I have her e-mail it to me, too, so I can put it on my MySpace page. Do you have a MySpace?"

The four of them looked at her as if she were from Mars. "I don't understand a single word you just said," Marko told her.

"Oh my God, I love your jacket! That is so cool! Did you buy it like that, or did you have it made?" She ran her fingers over some of the embroidery. "I saw a shirt in Hot Topic with some of these designs once. Can you believe they wanted seventy-five dollars for it? For a shirt? And my mom was a total bitch and wouldn't buy it for me either. Not even when I told her I'd throw in some of my birthday money . . ."

David put a hand to his forehead and winced. This girl was giving him a headache. Didn't she ever shut up?

"If you stop talking," he said, "we can take you to our place, to use the phone."

"Really?" She looked at him, her face brightening. "Thanks!"

They walked with her to where they had parked the bikes. "Who gets to ride with her?" Marko asked.

They all looked at him.

"Aw, no! No, please!"

"She seems to like you," Paul teased him.

"Besides," said Dwayne, "you won't have to put up with her for long. We should be back before the concert's over to pick up Star and Laddie."

"Killing this girl," David said, "will be a public service. She's annoying the shit out of me."

Cassie didn't know what the guys were talking about, but she thought their motorcycles were totally cool. She'd never known anyone who actually drove a motorcycle before. It would be so much fun!

The guy with the cool jacket motioned for her to get on behind him. "Um, don't I get a helmet?"

He just laughed. "We don't need no stinkin' helmets! Come on, live a little."

What would her mother say? What if they went around a corner too fast and crashed into a telephone pole or something? She'd die! She didn't want to die!

"Need a hand?" He lifted her onto the bike and told her to hang on.

"To what?"

"Me! Put your arms right around--there. That's good. Now just hang on, cause we go pretty fast."

"Okaaaaaaaaaaay!" She shrieked as the bike started up with a roar.

He wasn't kidding about going "pretty fast". They had to be doing at least sixty miles an hour!

"Can't you slow down?" she shouted, but he didn't seem to hear. If anything, he speeded up.

Cassie just closed her eyes and waited for the ride to be over.

"Cave, sweet cave."

Paul was the first to pull up to their usual parking place; he took "live fast" quite literally. "Where's the chick?"

"Last I saw, she was clinging onto Marko, screaming and crying," Dwayne said. "This is almost too cruel."

David gave him a pointed look. "You want to listen to her babble some more?"

"Man, I don't even know what she was saying! Cell? Message? Y space? What the hell is that?"

"Who cares?" Paul said. "She's dead meat anyway."

Finally Marko pulled up, the girl clinging to him like a life line. He had a hard time disengaging her grip from his person. "It's okay now," he said, "we've stopped. We're here."

"We are?" She opened her eyes and looked around. "Where are we?"

"This is where we hang out."

"And you have phone service here? Landline or cell?"

"Come inside and see."

He led her across the bridge and down into the cave proper. She was looking around like she'd never seen one before. "This is where you live?"

"Pretty much. Come on, we've got stuff to show you."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Oh . . . you'll see."

She followed them down the tunnel into a big open space. It was amazing.

"You like it?" said David. "This used to be the hottest resort in Santa Carla about eighty-five years ago. Then in 1906, when the big one hit San Francisco, the ground opened up, and this place took a header right into the crack! So now it's ours."

"He tells this story the same way every time," Paul whispered to Dwayne.

"It's his favorite story. Cut him some slack."

"When do we get to kill her?"

"Patience, young one. Patience." Dwayne slung his jacket over the back of the sofa and sat down.

"So, uh . . . where's the phone?" The girl was looking around in confusion.

"First things first," David said. "You want a drink?"

_What are you doing? _Marko asked him.

_Relax. Get me the ginger ale bottle from the cubby. _

"Go ahead and sit down," he said to the girl. "I'm sorry, I forgot to ask your name."

"Cassie," she said. Just like that.

_Trusting little thing, isn't she?_

_We've got her right where we want her._

_What's in the ginger ale?_

_Something to make her . . . relax._

Marko brought the ginger ale bottle, and David poured some into a paper cup for her. "Here you go. Enjoy."

Once again, Cassie's naivete got the best of her. Her brother's girlfriend, Allison, had warned her not to accept food or drinks from someone she didn't know. She'd forwarded warning e-mails to her many times about the dangers of trusting people who shouldn't be trusted.

Cassie never read those e-mails, however, dumping them right into her Trash folder. Too bad, or else she might have known, or at least suspected, that she was being slipped a mickey.

The blond guy, the one who looked like the guy on _24_, was watching her as she drank the ginger ale. It kind of creeped her out.

"What?" she asked. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

"Oh, no reason."

"Come on. What? Do I know you or something?"

"Your black nail polish. I like it."

"Really? My mom hates it. She says it makes me look dead."

"Not yet."

"What?"

"Not bad, I said."

"Oh. Okay. I have lipstick to match, but I'm not allowed to wear it outside the house. My parents think it's Satanic, or something. Isn't that dumb? Like putting black on your lips makes you evil or some . . . thing . . ."

Something weird was happening to her. The whole room started spinning around. And the blond guy was just staring at her.

Oh my God, she remembered now! That retarded movie Allison had made her watch last weekend. Lost . . . something. Those totally hot guys lived in a cave just like this . . .

"Sorry, Cassie," the guy with the jacket was saying. "But you're just too annoying to live."

"And we have to eat," said the guy with the dark hair.

Now she remembered. Oh holy #*$! They were--

There was a sudden sharp pain in her neck, and the sensation of something warm, flowing.

Vampires.

Anonymous Critic stared at the computer screen and smiled. Then she clicked over to another window and typed, Thanks for the attachment, Lost Girl. Some fanbrats are just too dumb to live.

Then she closed the window on Cassie, a.k.a. evanescencefan16, and her horrible fate.

We are GAST. We are the enemy of all those who refuse to use spell-check. Those who insist that _Harry Potter _is better with zombies. Those who write impossibly perfect characters and warp canon to revolve around them.

Do not fuck with us, fanbrats, or you will pay.


End file.
